Chapter 6 Are you out of your mind? This ghost not only attacks people physically...
Zhong Ying felt like she was about to faint, not just from being scared, but also from the dizziness caused by the collapse of her worldview. She had always been an atheist, not believing in ghosts or gods, only in science, but now she was being held hostage by someone behind her, whether it was a zombie or a ghost.
But since even time travel can happen, it wouldn't be surprising if other supernatural things happened as well.
The arm across Zhong Ying's neck continued to tighten, making it clear that the other person intended to strangle her.
The male ghost behind her really wanted to "marry" her and take her life, but Zhong Ying still wanted to live a little longer.
"Wait—" In this life-or-death moment, Zhong Ying struggled desperately, gripping the pale, bluish-white arm that felt like an iron clamp. The chilling touch sent shivers down her spine. Zhong Ying didn't have time to reconstruct her worldview; she desperately tried to think of a way to survive. But against a supernatural being, she had absolutely no chance of winning.
Like someone drowning, the air in her chest dwindled, and everything in her vision blurred… In her final moments, Zhong Ying was forced to use a bit of quick thinking. With her last breath, she managed to say, “I… I’m actually a ghost too, a ghost who’s been resurrected. We’re the same kind of ghost—”
Humans have no chance of winning against ghosts, so Zhong Ying chose not to be human anymore.
The "iron clamp" that had been tightening stopped, and the other party let out a short, mocking laugh, as if they had heard a joke.
Sincerity is her only trump card, and she chooses to confess and receive leniency.
Now I don't care about ruining my public image anymore.
Zhong Ying finally caught a breath in a brief moment. She gasped for air, her mind a jumble, and blurted out whatever came to mind, "Actually, I'm already dead too. Although my name is also Zhong Ying, I originally lived in the 21st century. I was an only child..."
Li Linshi's sinister gaze fell on Zhong Ying's tense profile. "I had no idea that Uncle Zhong's daughter was a madwoman?"
Even though the other person was speaking right next to her ear, her ears were so sensitive that she couldn't feel any breath moving at all. It was as if the air had turned into a stagnant pool of water. This realization made Zhong Ying realize once again that the person behind her was not a "person".
"That's right, how could someone not be crazy to do something like this? What a clever scheme." The male voice behind him mocked, tinged with a sinister resentment.
After Li Linshi was grabbed by the collar and forced to fall into the river, the girl's limbs wrapped around him like supple, twisting water plants. In a short while, he understood her plan and immediately struggled to push Zhong Ying away. However, he did not expect that he would encounter an even more difficult current in the river to escape in a short time, while Zhong Ying, whom he had pushed away, was lucky enough to survive.
“These past few days I’ve been thinking, even if I pushed you away, what difference would it make? In front of so many people, once we’re on land, I’ll have to marry you no matter what. It would have been better if I hadn’t pushed you away with so much force. We could have become a ghost couple down here. You wanted to marry me, didn’t you? This way, your wish would be fulfilled.”
The resentment, bitterness, frustration, and stubbornness in her words... made Zhong Ying feel the fear of impending death rise in her heart again, as if she had returned to the moment when she lost control of her body and suddenly collapsed to the ground.
"When I heard my fellow villagers distort the facts into a touching story, believing that I pushed you away to give you a chance to live, and portraying us as a tragic, heartbreaking couple separated by death—"
He spoke slowly and deliberately, each word uttered through gritted teeth, his voice seemingly frozen in ice.
Do you know how I feel?
Putting herself in Zhong Ying's shoes, she had to admit that this was truly infuriating.
"I want to kill you, I want to kill you every single moment."
Li Linshi did indeed do that. He stood at the door of Uncle Zhong's house, but was barked at by the big black dog guarding the door for a long time. In addition, there was a child in the yard, so he had to give up for the time being.
After that, Li Linshi stood outside the house, listening to his father inside who wisely refused Uncle Zhong's offer to "compensate for his son" and only asked the other family to help with his funeral arrangements. His murderous intent surged again, but Zhong Ying was protected by her family members, leaving him no way to make a move.
Then came his funeral, where everyone from the entire production team came. He couldn't very well demand his life in front of the uncles and elders who had watched him grow up and had come specifically to mourn him, so he could only watch helplessly as Zhong Ying walked away in the procession down the mountain.
After the funeral, Zhong Ying stayed at home for several days until today, when Li Linshi finally found an opportunity to take action.
“Someone told me,” Li Linshi said, but he immediately realized he had made a mistake. He had only been dead for a short time and still retained human habits. He paused for a moment and then continued, “If a ghost kills someone randomly, it will create negative karma. If it wants to be reincarnated, it can only be reborn as an animal, where it will be slaughtered by others in its next life. But if it is someone who killed it, it is called a grievance with a grievance and a debtor, and the ghost is just coming to collect a debt.”
Zhong Ying's heart pounded wildly, almost choking her. What did that mean? So killing her was perfectly justified?
The demon behind her was filled with murderous intent again. He no longer wanted to strangle her with his arm, but instead used his hand. His hand had long, slender fingers, and he grabbed Zhong Ying's neck with one hand. The blue veins on his pale, bloodless skin were clearly visible, and they became even more prominent when he exerted force.
"Listen to me, I understand the principle of 'a life for a life,'" Zhong Ying's face gradually flushed red. She was being choked and struggling to breathe, her words coming out incredibly fast as her survival instincts drove her brain to its limits. "The original Zhong Ying has already paid the price for her actions with her life; she's dead! That's why I'm here. I'm not Zhong Ying; I'm truly a ghost possessing another's body—"
Oh.
Li Linshi let out a cold laugh. So Zhong Ying wasn't just "crazy," she was also good at making up lies.
The neck beneath his palm was warm, and the veins on the side of her neck were in sync with the rapid, pounding rhythm of her heart. So vibrant, how could she call him a ghost? Then what was he without body temperature and a heartbeat?
But he slowly loosened his grip. Life after death was actually quite boring. There was no need to eat or sleep, people couldn't see him, and the ghost who told him not to kill people indiscriminately had to take care of his children. Li Linshi didn't even have anyone to talk to, so he didn't mind taking Zhong Ying away a little later, if she could bring him some fun.
Zhong Ying keenly sensed the other party's loosening of control and immediately seized the opportunity to struggle free, subconsciously moving further away from him.
After staggering two or three steps, Zhong Ying turned around to face the ghost who was demanding her life, wanting it to see the sincerity on her face more clearly.
As soon as she turned around, Zhong Ying gasped in shock upon seeing who it was.
"Holy crap, this male ghost with such striking features is absolutely gorgeous..."
This person—no, this ghost—was exceptionally beautiful. He had naturally deep-set eyes, a high nose, and thin lips, which made his pale, bloodless face appear even more striking. His thick black hair and smooth jawline resembled the meticulously drawn lines of a fine-brush painting. He was so beautiful that he seemed like a seductive ghost capable of bewitching people.
Besides the phrase "a peerless beauty," all Zhong Ying could think of was "Holy crap!"
In modern terms, he looked quite authoritative.
Perhaps because the original owner felt guilty towards him, or perhaps to avoid the situation, the memories Zhong Ying received only contained fleeting glimpses of this unlucky young man who had been chosen, until now when she suddenly faced him directly.
Although his feet were on the ground, there was no shadow behind him. In fact, his figure had a hazy, translucent quality. This eerie, inhuman, ghostly feeling quickly brought Zhong Ying back to her senses from the allure of his beauty.
In a life-or-death situation, Zhong Ying's survival instinct prevailed over everything. She fought desperately to save her life. "I am telling the truth. Although I am also named Zhong Ying, I was born thirty years later and died at the age of twenty-seven. The cause of death was sudden death."
Li Linshi found it absurd and was so jealous he wanted to die.
"Would anyone actually drink themselves to death from vinegar?" Li Linshi asked with a cold laugh, his dark eyes fixed on Zhong Ying, his gaze gloomy and devoid of any warmth.
He was hoping for a little fun in his dreary days, but what he got was a laughable slap in the face.
Li Linshi regretted it. He should have strangled her immediately instead of listening to her tell these absurd lies.
"Huh?" Zhong Ying was stunned for a moment, then quickly realized what she meant and explained, "It's not the vinegar as in drinking vinegar, it's the sudden death as in 'sudden death.' Many modern people die this way because they work too long overtime, and so did I."
Li Linshi didn't believe a word of it. "Can someone die from working eight hours a day?"
“…Twelve hours,” Zhong Ying corrected. At this moment, the resentment of the working class suddenly resurfaced, offsetting some of her fear of the supernatural creature. “For the past six months, we have been required to stay at the company for twelve hours a day, and before I died, I had been working overtime for seventeen consecutive days. The work that was originally outsourced is now all done by us.”
Li Linshi choked up, "What do you do for a living?"
According to Zhong Ying, she did more work than the oxen in the production team.
“A concept artist in the R&D department of a game company. Games are…” Zhong Ying found that these things, which are commonplace in the minds of modern people, were a bit difficult to explain at this moment. Since she couldn’t explain them clearly in words, she looked around and picked up a twig from the roadside to draw on the ground.
“This is a mobile phone,” Zhong Ying sketched out the shape of a mobile phone with just a few strokes, “Games are a form of leisure and entertainment that is displayed on this screen…”
Um, I don't think we had cell phones back then.
Fearing Li Linshi wouldn't understand, Zhong Ying could only provide more modern examples to support her point: "In the future, all houses will be high-rise buildings. I'll live on the sixteenth floor. Even in the countryside, most houses will be two-story villas. The roads will be paved, and they'll be full of cars, so traffic jams will be severe, especially during the morning and evening rush hours. That's why I take the subway to work. The subway is a kind of underground transportation..."
Zhong Ying originally thought that everything in the modern world could only be kept to herself, but she never expected that she would have the chance to tell others, ah, I mean, other ghosts everything.
As she spoke, she kept an eye on the male ghost's expression. Seeing that his beautiful but lifeless face seemed less gloomy and terrifying, Zhong Ying couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.
A tiny water droplet hung on his long, ink-black eyelashes. Li Linshi looked up, shifting his gaze from the image on the ground that had been painted over in a short time, and turned to look at Zhong Ying.
Zhong Ying looked at him expectantly, hoping that he would finally believe that she wasn't the Zhong Ying who killed him.
"Are you mentally ill?"
The male ghost had very light-colored lips, and his thin lips parted slightly. His mouth, which was at minus ten degrees Celsius, uttered words that could instantly ignite someone's anger.
Zhong Ying was stunned. No, why was this ghost not only attacking her body (trying to strangle her), but also making personal attacks (saying she was sick)?
Li Linshi was actually serious.
Although he was now beyond the realm of science, after listening to Zhong Ying's words and seeing her drawings, Li Linshi's first thought was of something he had read in a book in the school library. There was a mental illness called dissociative identity disorder, in which the main personality, after experiencing certain events, either seeks protection or escapes reality, thus splitting into other personalities. These personalities would spontaneously develop their own temperaments, worldviews, and even completely different professions.
After listening to him, Zhong Ying felt that what he said made a lot of sense. For a second, she even doubted herself, but the next second she came to her senses. She really didn't have a split personality!
The exhaustion from working overtime or even all night, the fear of her parents arguing when she was a child, and the helplessness she felt when she grew up... how could all of this be imagined? It was all the pain that life, like a dull knife, had slowly worn down her body and mind. The remaining traces prove that everything really happened.
“I’m really not a second personality. Everything I just said is the truth.” Zhong Ying’s head was throbbing. How to prove “I’m not myself” was practically a philosophical question. She racked her brains, then tried a different approach: “I’m really not a second personality. Everything I said is the truth.”
Zhong Ying repeated what she had just said in English. She had read that this was the method used by protagonists in novels or time-travel dramas when they recognized each other and proved their identities to each other. It was super effective.
Unexpectedly, Li Linshi was taken aback after hearing this, and only glanced at her with an even stranger expression, "Your brother isn't cut out for studying, so why didn't your parents let you continue your schooling?"
Zhong Ying: ...
She was truly at her wit's end.
Zhong Ying looked helplessly at the male ghost who seemed to be feeling sorry for her, when she suddenly saw something that startled her.
Perhaps because he died in the river, this person—I mean, this ghost—was still damp from the river. And to make matters worse, he was wearing a white shirt. As everyone knows, such thin white clothes become translucent when wet, clinging tightly to the body.
Zhong Ying was so focused on the other person's appearance and subtle facial expressions that she didn't notice how... [unclear] the other person was.
Zhong Ying immediately looked away in embarrassment.
"You're a ghost now, can't you improve your comprehension? I know English because I went to school, not just university, I even finished graduate school!" Zhong Ying was in a state of utter despair, not only because she was truly at her wit's end, but also because she had accidentally caught a glimpse of the two nipples on the ghost's body, pale cherry-colored ones at that...
The collapse was something Zhong Ying hadn't intended to see, but it suddenly burst into her field of vision in an instant.
Upon seeing Zhong Ying's evasive and unapproachable demeanor, Li Linshi's expression turned cold, as if frost had quickly settled between his brows and eyes, and his entire body radiated a murderous aura.
"It's all a lie."
For a fleeting moment, he actually felt sorry for her.
"I really didn't!"
Zhong Ying hurriedly retorted. She had already revealed her secrets to such an extent, so how could this ghost still think she was lying? Zhong Ying was practically begging the heavens to judge who was loyal and who was treacherous.
"You don't even dare to look me in the eye, yet you dare to say you're not lying?" Li Linshi's eyes were as dark as ink, and his cold gaze looked at Zhong Ying as if she were a dead person, or in his eyes, she was someone who was about to die.
Zhong Ying quickly raised her eyes, glanced at it, and then couldn't help but turn her head away again. She could no longer suppress her inner turmoil. "Big brother, I'm just trying to avoid looking at what I shouldn't see, okay? I can't just stare at this like a perverted guy, thinking it's some kind of freebie!"
Should one not look at what is improper?
Li Linshi froze, then looked down...
The air was quiet for a while.
Zhong Ying carefully turned her head back slightly, controlling her gaze to only sweep above the male ghost's neck—
"Huh?" Zhong Ying asked in surprise.
The wind rustled through the branches, and the leaves whispered. There was no longer any male ghost under the tree; only she remained.
Zhong Ying was incredulous. They were just letting her go like that?
A note from the author:
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Zhong Ying: (Breaking down) I really don't want to look around like a pervert!
Male ghost: (breaking down) When did I start acting like a pervert?!
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